About the Author

ERIK LARSON is the author of four national bestsellers: In the
Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the
White City, and Isaac's Storm, which have collectively
sold more than 5.5 million copies. His magazine stories have
appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly,
Harper's and other publications and his books have been
published in fourteen countries.

Reviews

For his latest, Larson (author most recently of Lethal Passage,
about the gun industry) draws on the diaries of Isaac Cline, who
was chief observer for the Federal Weather Bureau in Galveston, TX,
when a ferocious hurricane hit on September 8, 1900, leaving 10,000
dead. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Torqued by drama and taut with suspense, this absorbing narrative
of the 1900 hurricane that inundated Galveston, Tex., conveys the
sudden, cruel power of the deadliest natural disaster in American
history. Told largely from the perspective of Isaac Cline, the
senior U.S. Weather Bureau official in Galveston at the time, the
story considers an era when "the hubris of men led them to believe
they could disregard even nature itself." As barometers plummet and
wind gauges are plucked from their moorings, Larson (Lethal
Passage) cuts cinematically from the eerie "eyewall" of the
hurricane to the mundane hubbub of a lunchroom moments before it
capitulates to the arriving winds, from the neat pirouette of
Cline's house amid rising waters to the bridge of the steamship
Pensacola, tossed like flotsam on the roiling seas. Most
intriguingly, Larson details the mistakes that led bureau officials
to dismiss warnings about the storm, which killed over 6000 and
destroyed a third of the island city. The government's weather
forecasting arm registered not only temperature and humidity but
also political climate, civic boosterism and even sibling
rivalries. America's patronizing stance toward Cuba, for instance,
shut down forecasts from Cuban meteorologists, who had accurately
predicted the Galveston storm's course and true scale, even as U.S.
weather officials issued mollifying bulletins calling for mere rain
and high winds. Larson expertly captures the power of the storm
itself and the ironic, often catastrophic consequences of the
unpredictable intersection of natural force and human choice. Major
ad/promo; author tour; simultaneous Random House audio; foreign
rights sold in Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan and the U.K. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

YA-Larson has brought together powerful elements to create one of
the most memorable of the "natural disaster" docudramas that have
come out recently. Meteorologists within the U.S. Weather Bureau at
the turn of the 20th century had become so confident of their own
forecasting abilities that they dismissed with irritation troubling
weather reports out of Cuba. In a burgeoning port city like
Galveston, TX, in 1900, the idea that severe damage could be done
by a hurricane seemed preposterous. Following several threads at
once, Larson creates a likable character in the real-life
weatherman Isaac Cline, tracing his career as a meteorologist. A
tropical depression takes on an ominous life of its own as it
thrashes its way through the Caribbean and up through the Gulf of
Mexico. The town of Galveston becomes one of the major characters
in the story. Poignant details and sweeping narrative create a book
that is hard to put down even though the outcome is a well-known
historical fact: more than 6000 dead and an entire city devastated.
At the same time, Larson chronicles a critical period of history
for the National Weather Bureau. The blatant errors in judgment led
to changes within that federal agency. More than anything, this is
a gripping and heartbreaking story of what happens when arrogance
meets the immutable forces of nature.-Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T.
Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business
Information.

"A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the more
compelling for being true." --The New York Times Book Review

"Gripping ... the Jaws of hurricane yarns." --The
Washington Post

"The best storm book I've read, consumed mostly in twenty-four
hours; these pages filled me with dread. Days later, I am still
glancing out the window nervously. A well-told story." --Daniel
Hays, author of My Old Man and the Sea "Isaac's Storm
so fully swept me away into another place, another time that I
didn't want it to end. I braced myself from the monstrous winds,
recoiled in shock at the sight of flailing children floating by,
and shook my head at the hubris of our scientists who were so
convinced that they had the weather all figured out. Erik Larson's
writing is luminous, the story absolutely gripping. If there is one
book to read as we enter a new millennium, it's Isaac's
Storm, a tale that reminds us that there are forces at work out
there well beyond our control, and maybe even well beyond our
understanding." --Alex Kotlowitz, author of The Other Side of
the River and There Are No Children Here "There is
electricity in these pages, from the crackling wit and intelligence
of the prose to the thrillingly described terrors of natural mayhem
and unprecedented destruction. Though brimming with the subtleties
of human nature, the nuances of history, and the poetry of
landscapes, Isaac's Storm still might best be described as a
sheer page turner." --Melissa Faye Greene, author of Praying for
Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing "Superb.... Larson has
made [Isaac] Cline, turn-of-the-century Galveston, and the Great
Hurricane live again." --The Wall Stret Journal "Erik
Laron's accomplishment is to have made this great-storm story a
very human one --thanks to his use of the large number of
survivors' accounts--without ignoring the hurricane itself."
--The Boston Globe "Vividly captures the devastation."
--Newsday "This brilliant exploration of the hurrican's
deadly force...tracks the gathering storm as if it were a
character.... Larson has the storyteller's gift of keeping the
reader spellbound." --The Times-Picayune "With consumate
narrative skill and insight into turn-of-the-century American
culture.... Larson's story is about the folly of all who believe
that man can master or outwit the forces of nature." --The News
& Observer "A powerful story ... a classic tale of mankind
versus nature." --The Christian Science Monitor

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